by Ned White

Created on: November 23, 2009

A career in freelance writing promises a mix of joy, liberation, pain, and rejection. If there's one constant to the job, it is chronic uncertainty. When's the next job? Do I dare plan for a vacation? Will there be enough money to get me through Christmas? And how do I get clients to stop calling late Friday afternoon requesting a rewrite by Monday morning?

I speak from experience because I've been a reasonably successful full-time freelancer for about thirty years, focusing largely on corporate videoscripts, speechwriting, live business theater, and some occasional copywriting. I've also written for public and commercial television, and to a lesser degree for theater. Some years have been slow. Others have been so flat-out crazy I've had to turn down several high-paying job offers. Month to month, year to year, it's impossible to know what's coming.

Here's an amalgam of tips, tenets, and bits of philosophy infused with deep personal bias but which still may be helpful.

First, be a good writer. This sounds numbingly simple, but in fact I've met many writers who think they're good when they're still raw and untested. In other words, they're not good, not yet. I strongly believe that a good writer is one who can write just about anything. A feature story. A poem. A teleplay. An obituary. Delicious-sounding copy for a cereal box, a ribald limerick, an inspiring speech. So much of successful writing is knowing "the form" and being able to mimic the best examples of it. It should also go without saying that the work, whatever it is, must be mechanically strong. Nothing shows up a bad writer faster than sloppy syntax, inept punctuation, or shoddy grammar.

Let's assume you're a good writer - you're a quick study, you're technically highly skilled, you're imaginative, clever and insightful. What opportunities are there to show off your work and make decent money?

Aside from best-selling novels and successful screenplays (big money with daunting odds), the highest-paying work is for corporations, with speechwriting winning hands down. CEOs of large companies often pay more than $20,000 for a 20-minute speech. I haven't made that tier (and I'm not sure I'd want to), but writing speeches pays very well and is intensely satisfying - especially when the client is thrilled with the product. Yes, it takes time and experience to build up a portfolio. And you need to know your client inside and out. I wrote a perfectly good, funny, highly energized speech for the CEO of a major

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